Twitter jumps the shark during debate

With each big news event, there is a low-simmer conflict amongst politicos about Twitter’s contribution. Undoubtedly, it’s invaluable as both a live-stream of news and a center for water cooler conversation and gossip. But, as more and more people utilize the micro-blogging service — especially feverish news junkies for whom everything is tweet-worthy — it’s also become a relentless gush of information that can outgrow its usefulness by being too overwhelming to consume. (The “like trying to drink water from a firehose” analogy proves apt.)

”I have never seen my twitter stream move faster,” wrote The Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway. “My Twitter feed is like the Tower of Terror of social media,” wrote Huffington Post’s Eliot Nelson. “Getting car sick from my twitter feed,” said Roll Call’s Abby Livingston. “My twitter stream is moving so fast I am dizzy,” said the Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller. “@tweetdeck sarting to look like a NiagraFalls,” said NBC News’ Adam Verdugo. “I like when Twitter moves this fast, because it means we’re all just shouting into the ether, and not actually reading any of it,” said NewYorker.com’s Alex Koppelman.

As Wednesday’s debate started, Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan said he was signing off from Twitter. Ditto The Atlantic’s James Fallows. New York University’s Jay Rosen, too. Media Matters’ Joe Strupp wrote, “Wouldn’t anyone who cares about the debate be watching it, not all these Twitter feeds?”

Wednesday’s presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney made this conflict more acute than at any other point during this campaign, it seemed. There was the combination of an enormous audience (60 million people were estimated to have tuned in), the close proximity to Election Day and the clarified roster of candidates (attention is no longer sprinkled, say, amongst a crowded field of eight candidates during a long primary season that attracted disparate attention).

As a result, Twitter saw its share of useful nuggets, but also a new low in the area of banal coverage. Nothing, it seemed, was too mundane to chime in on. To some, it will be seen as part of the kaleidoscope that paints a news portrait more colorful than ever previously possible. To others, however, it will be seen as a reason to conclude that sometimes less is more, even with some of the nation’s top journalists.